Tag - google

Dangerous lawyers: YouTube & TechCrunch

November 15, 2006

Lawyers working for web companies are like Dick Cheney out hunting: liable to shoot their best friends in the face.

For a perfect example, see this TechCrunch cease & desist, sent by that paragon of intellectual property rights protection, YouTube:

Buried in my email this evening I found a cease and desist letter from an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, representing their client YouTube. We’ve been accused of a number of things: violating YouTube’s Terms of Use, of “tortious interference of a business relationship, and in fact, many business relationships,” of committing an “unfair business practice,” and “false advertising.” The attorney goes on to demand that we cease and desist in from engaging in these various actions or face legal remedies.

The offense we committed was creating a small tool that lets people download YouTube videos to their hard drives. We referenced the tool in a recent post that walked people through the process of moving YouTube Videos to their iPod.

The dangerous part is not in sending the cease & desist notice per se. It’s not even in sending it wrongfully, as Micheal Arrington goes on to point out in the rest of the post.

The idiocy of almost Biblical proportions is sending out a C&D to TechCrunch as if it’s just some blog written by just some guy. The idiocy is not knowing that TechCrunch is one of the biggest and most influential blogs on the planet – particularly in terms of web start-ups and technology.

And the danger is in not putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with the knowledge that your ridiculous C&D, and your name, and your firm’s name … are all going to be splashed across the computers of the most knowedgeable and influential people in the industry.

At the very least you need to have a smarter, more subtle, and more targeted approach. Leave the bullhorn at home. Then, you ensure that you don’t target people who are among your biggest fans. If you’re absolutely forced to, you do it in as nice a way as possible.

And, finally, being sure that what you’re issuing the C&D for is actually a violation of the terms and conditions of your site would be a very good idea.

[tags] techcrunch, youtube, C&D, lawyer, law, legal, web, john koetsier [/tags]

Lousy funny search engine

November 9, 2006

You must check out Ms. Dewey. She doesn’t know a lot about very much, but this is such such such a cool idea:

The page loading animation is almost ingenious enough to make you forget that the page is actually taking some time to load. Enough to stop you from getting annoyed, at least.

Unfortunately, the seach results take forever to arrive and pretty much suck. Can’t win ’em all, huh?

(Saw if first at andrewteman.org.)

[tags] search, engine, dewey, cool, john koetsier [/tags]

NHL on Google Video

November 5, 2006

As a proud Canadian (which, being translated, means “rabid hockey fan”) I could not be more delighted to see the NHL on Google Video. (More about it on the Google Video blog, ZDnet)

This is kids-cereal-tiger-yelling great.

It looks like it might take a couple of days for new games to get uploaded (last night’s Vancouver Canuck’s vs. Colorado Avalanche game is not yet up).

But full games are up, quality is just a little north of YouTube, and audio is excellent.

As far as the funny little bouncy-ball kids game where if someone runs into you when your feet happen to be moving, you get a penalty (OK, foul), I couldn’t care less if it’s no longer on Google Video.

Sorry, my prejudices are showing.

[tags] nhl, hockey, video, google, nba, john koetsier [/tags]

Online advertising tidbit: banners are NOT useless

November 1, 2006

If you’re like me, you’ve long since given up on banner ads.

After all, who cares that your ad has been shown 25 million times – if nothing happens, you don’t get sales, or you don’t get a traffic bump. And banner adblindness is such a major, major reality these days that this is often exactly what happens.

However, there may be a side benefit – one that a smart people with access to a lot better metrics and data than you and I could find:

If you run banner ads, one study for Harris Direct shows that you can increase your brand awareness about 7% after a reasonable buy of banner ads. That’s just fine, though I’m on the record as saying that most banner campaigns are a waste of money. The kicker? In the study, Harris did the banner buy and watched the number of clicks to their contextual ad (you know, the text ads) go up by 249% over the next week.

Wow.

The source is Usama Fayyad of Yahoo! (He’s one of the few people can say, “Well, yes, actually I am a rocket scientist.”) He now runs their Strategic Data Solutions division.

Source: Seth Godin.

[tags] online, advertising, banner, ads, PPC, Yahoo, AdWords, seth godin, john koetsier [/tags]

What should Yahoo do?

October 29, 2006

In my usual Sunday seach for SLOBs, I came across this interesting post: What should Yahoo! do to keep up?

What, indeed, should Yahoo! do? There’s too much there not to work.

IMHO, Yahoo’s achilles heel is a less-efficient pay-per-click monetization engine than Google’s AdWords. Fix it and good things will start to happen.

[tags] yahoo, google, PPC, adwords, adsense, john koetsier [/tags]

Advertising wants to be free? Get a clue!

October 25, 2006

From the shamelessly-reposted-from-elsewhere department:

Scott Karp on Publishing 2.0 seems to have a hard time understanding why, in a social media new media web 2.0 conversational marketing world, companies would still want to advertise:

I’ve written before about the challenge MySpace faces in getting companies to pay for what individuals can get for free, i.e. a MySpace page. But really all of media — including the newly adopted software industry — faces the same problem. In fact, small businesses connecting with customers directly sounds like a challenge to Google as well.

I don’t think that’s a difficult question at all. In fact, I think the answer is startlingly, blindingly obvious. Here’s the comment I posted in response:

Either I’m stupid, and too quickly jumping to what I think is the obvious response to your post, Scott, or you’re missing something really obvious.

Conversations are slow, by and large, because they require the formation of some level of relationship. Sure, there’s the occasional viral shooting star that jumps to huge numbers very quickly, but for most companies, building audience is long, hard, slow work.

Good work, and rewarding work, but long and slow.

Advertising is a way to short-cut that process … a way to speed up awareness levels that then buy you the opportunity to have a conversation with a potential client, which in turn buys you the opportunity to potentially make a sale.

Let’s face it: not everyone who needs office cleaning done in Anytown is going to jump on MySpace to find a janitor. And not every janitorial firm will rank in the first few Google results, particularly if they’re new to the new media game.

So advertising is a way to pay to get on that first page. Maybe it’s temporary. Maybe you abandon it when you get big and smart and popular enough.

But it’s a good kick-start.

I think we see the social media marketing success stories like English Cut and think that it’s all easy, quick, and free. Well, Thomas Mahon has been blogging for almost two years. There are overnight successes, but they are by and large the exception, not the rule.

I also wonder if overnight successes have any staying power. Andrew Catton of DabbleDB was at Vancouver Enterprise Forum last night, and one thing he said caught my ear: the blogosphere buzz that rocketed DabbleDB to the forefront is largely over by now … and now the company has to survive and thrive on its own merits, and on a slower, more “normal” growth trajectory.

I live and die on the successes of social media integrated into the lifeblood of a company for marketing, for product development, for voice of the customer, and PR. But there’s no doubt that advertising still has a major, major role to play.

Perhaps all businesses should be viral, but that does not mean that all can instantly and successfully become viral.

[tags] advertising, google, adsense, adwords, publishing2.0, john koetsier [/tags]

Been nice knowing you, Rollyo

October 24, 2006

Looks like Google has just fired a shot across the bow of Rollyo, which promised that anyone could have his or her own search engine:

Rollyo is the fast, easy way to create personal search engines using only the sources you trust.

New from Google, the great innovator, a personal search engine:

Wouldn’t it be cool if you could easily build a search engine on your blog or website tailored to the topics and areas you know and love the most?

Hmmm … the new Microsoft?

. . .
. . .

Update: Mathew Ingram got in on this one before me. See also Matt Cutts and Om Malik.

[tags] microsoft, google, rollyo, innovation, competition, john koetsier [/tags]

Of course Google wants to own the business of content

October 24, 2006

Scott Karp has a riff on Google and the business of content.

Should we be surprised that Google wants to own the monetization of content? Not at all. That’s what this has been about from the beginning – at least from the beginning of AdSense.

What’s clear is that content creators are no longer in control of the content business.

Actually, real content creators – authors, writers, directors, actors – have very seldom been in control of the “content business.” Publishers have been … and publishers are just businesses whose product is content and whose assembly line is made of up creative people with word processors.

(In other words, I define content creators differently than Karp. Just because you own a content business or content industry doesn’t make you a content producer.)

New boss, same as the old boss.

[tags] content, business, google, AdSense, AdWords, publishing, john koetsier [/tags]

Google wacking

October 20, 2006

Travelling around the mulberry bush trying to log into Google Calendar this morning:

Fun, fun, fun.

[tags] google, calendar, web, usability, error, video, john koetsier [/tags]

AdSense CPM: $3-4

October 19, 2006

I had never believed it, but you can easily make $3-4 per thousand pageviews with AdSense.

My thinking only a few months ago was that at best, advertising could give you about $1 CPM. Not so. My CPM this month is almost $2, and spiking on certain days and for certain articles well into the $5-6 CPM range.

I suspect a site like PlentyofFish would be even higher. It obviously makes a ton of money …

[tags] adsense, adwords, CPM, blogging, john koetsier [/tags]

Performancing ad network for bloggers: set your own prices

October 18, 2006

In most markets, buyers and sellers cooperate to set prices: supply and demand. Until recently, that was not true of contextual text link advertising.

I posted about it a couple of days ago: Google AdWords/AdSense maintains a lock on pricing for ads showing on your site. Why can’t bloggers have a hand in determining what they’d let ad space on their blogs go for?

Well, I just got an email from Nick Wilson at Performancing … and that time has come. Performancing is opening up their ad network to bloggers. And as you can see here, bloggers will be able to set their own pricing. The announcement is not official yet – that’s forthcoming. But the option is exciting.

Publishers have the opportunity to set their own prices on a per blog basis. It is not however, what we recommend for the vast majority of our partners. auto pricing is a clever little algorithm that examines your blogs projected impression and click stats, factors in other data gained from similar blogs and aggregated data from your category and determines a fair price for a 30 day spot on your blog.

The goal of auto pricing is to set the optimal value for an ad on your blog.
The cost of an ad on your blog will change as the market for that spot changes. Changes to your own statisitcs as well as similar blogs also influence the price.
You can opt-out of auto pricing at any time by hitting link by your blogs price under the “my blogs” tab.

Of course, Performancing does not recommend it … and I’m sure that for most bloggers, it isn’t a good idea. But for a strictly niched and popular blog, this could double or triple revenue.

Note that Performancing also gives bloggers 70-75% of the ad sale price … whereas we don’t really know what Google is selling ads for or how much margin they’re making. This again can only help bloggers make more money.

Which is not a bad thing!

[tags] ads, performancing, contextual, bloggers, problogger, adsense, adwords [/tags]

Odd … AdSense is down

October 14, 2006

Apparently even Google has the occasional downtime …

Here I just thought it was the rest of us that are mortal humans. While it’s nice to know that every company, no matter how big and successful, still has the occasional issue, it’s a little annoying when you want to check your AdSense stats.

[ update 12:32 PM PST (four hours later): still down ] [tags] google, adsense, adwords, service, down, john koetsier [/tags]

Why won’t Google let bloggers control AdSense price minimums?

October 12, 2006

I just checked my AdSense revenue for today and noticed a click that paid me a stunning total of three bloody cents.

I mean, I appreciate the long tail of just about anything as much as anyone, but boy-oh-boy! That has got to be the skinny prehensile appendage of pay-per-click text advertising.

Which got me thinking: AdWords is currently set up so that advertisers can decide what they are willing to pay. Then Google automagics the numbers so that they pay only a penny more than then next most profligate advertiser.

All well and good.

But what if Google set up AdSense so that publishers (that’s me and you) can decide at what price they are willing to sell? Then Google would automagically set up advertisers and publishers with matching parameters – kind of like an electronic ad dating service.

(AdWords and AdSense are two sides of the same coin: AdWords is the advertiser side, where ads are purchased; AdSense is the publisher side, where ads are displayed.)

I’d like to be able to set minimums for my ad space. Why won’t Google let me do that?

[tags] google, adsense, adwords, publisher, advertiser, pay-per-click, john koetsier [/tags]

What I want to know from Google AdSense

October 9, 2006

A couple of weeks ago I stuck Google AdSense ads on the right sidebar of this blog. I won’t get rich on the proceeds unless I get very, very old … but it should pay for my server. Here’s my question, though:

What posts are generating adwords clicks?

I’d really like to know. What kinds of posts generate clicks?

Whether I decide to write more of those or not is another question, but it’d be nice to know. Also, which ads enticed the click?

As far as I can see – and I’ve only re-enabled ads on this site a couple of weeks ago – there is no way to track or find this information. The only tracking information you can generate is based on what you put into the system: channels.

Well, that’s helpful for those who have multiple blogs (like me). You can set up a channel for each blog and monitor which one are profitable. But that’s not very fine-grained data … and I’m not going to set up a channel for each post.

Why the secrecy?
Why is this information not readily available? Wouldn’t it be in Google’s best interests to have bloggers and site owners more able to write the kinds of posts that generate clicks?

Would this data enable click fraud artists?

I assume there are reasons not to do this. I assume that Google has thought of this and decided not to do it. And I further assume that perhaps they are concerned about fraud and gaming the system.

But for the life of me I can’t figure out why.

[tags] adsense, google, adwords, data, clicks, john koetsier [/tags]

Google book search pumping up book sales

October 7, 2006

As I prognosticated a couple of months ago, Google Book Search is actually increasing publisher’s sales instead of aiding and abetting piracy, as most publishers assumed it would.

The problems with books that aren’t selling isn’t property rights, it’s obscurity. Google Book Search is a means out of that obscurity and a way to digitally filter the long tail of analog printed material.

Google has been enlisting publishers to voluntarily submit their books so that Web searchers can more easily find titles related to their interests, but some fear the project could lead to piracy or exploitation of their copyrighted content.

“Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers,” said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.

She declined to provide specific figures, but said that sales growth has been “significant.” Scollans estimated that 1 million customers have viewed 12,000 Oxford titles using the Google program.

Why this is not immediately obvious and apparent to dead tree publishers, I haven’t got a clue. Perhaps it’s because they still think of people who take money out of their wallets and put it into publishers’ as “consumers.” Whenever I see “consumer,” I think “misspelling of customer.”

But maybe that’s just one of my peccadilloes.

[tags] books, search, publishers, john koetsier[/tags] Credit: saw this first on Slashdot.

Google: money talks louder than a dead black guy

October 3, 2006

Google’s sacred algorithm can’t be changed or even have its results filtered … even though the first search result for Martin Luther King is a hate-filled white supremacist pack of lies.

(See also Nicholas Carr and Elinor Mills at C|Net.)

What the site says
The site includes typical anti-Semitic nonsense (“who really owns America,” and so forth) as well as accusations that MLK was a plagiarist, a cheater, and a “sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people.” It also refers to MLK as “the beast.” This is not exactly the site that you want kids going to for resources on Martin Luther King.

Google won’t adjust the results
There’s always going to be crap online … it’s the nature of the beast. The problem in this case is that the crap is not buried down in the pile, it’s the first link from Google. Implicitly, then, Google is saying that this is a trusted link.

The algorithm is king. The results stand.

But even upon multiple requests – including one from AOL – Google will not adjust the rankings, or remove the hate site from its listings. Elinor Mills reports that a Google representative responded with “in this particular example, the page is relevant to the query and many people have linked to it, giving it more PageRank than some of the other pages. These two factors contribute to its ranking.”

The algorithm is king. The results stand. Google won’t artificially change search results – even when they’ve been gamed by neo-nazis linking to propaganda.

Or will they?

What about Google China?
If Google won’t change its algorithm, and if the algorithm’s search results are sancrosact … what about China? Isn’t that exactly what they’ve done in China?

Google China routinely and continuously self-censors search results to keep things that the totalitarian Chinese government doesn’t want its citizens to know secret, hidden, burried.

Is this evil?
What’s the difference? Could it be all the money that Google hopes to make in China?

And if so, could that possibly be just a little bit evil?

[tags] google, evil, china, MLK, martin luther king, hate, white supremacist, nicholas carr, c|net, john koetsier [/tags]

Funniest tech support call ever recorded

October 2, 2006

Saw this today on BuzzCustomer. Could not stop laughing:

Pray, pray, pray that you never get this guy for tech support. Abandon all hope, if you do. But please, please, record it for posterity?

[tags] video, microsoft, technical support, call center, john koetsier [/tags]

Post-modern advertising (or, how we know contextual ads work online)

October 1, 2006

I had a little post-modern moment visiting Nicholas Carr’s blog lately. Why? The ads, of course.

Here’s the ad. It’s a Google ad. A Google text link ad. And it’s advertising – yes – another text link advertising network.

I recently signed up for Text Link Ads, by the way. And yes, that’s a sponsored link. If you click it and sign up, I get 25 bucks (I think). Don’t feel obligated.

But here’s my point:

When’s the last time you saw a mainstream media ad for a mainstream media advertising company? If you’re like me, it’s been a long, long time.

Why?

You would think, if MSM advertising worked, agencies would be all over it. Turns out, when they put their money where their mouth is, agencies want something a lot more targeted.

Like text link ads? Yup, like text link ads.

Even though they are not free of problems, text link ads are FAR more targeted than your typical TV show audience.

Some company is putting its money on the line for every click … not spreading it out over thousands of potential viewers. Some company is specifically choosing keywords that their ad will pay for … not a made-to-segment TV show that no-one really knows exactly who the audience is on any given night. And some web visitor is reading/watching/creating something online that Google determines is significantly related to those keywords.

The proof? Even advertising companies are advertising now.

At least, the smart technical ones.

[tags] advertising, marketing, google, adsense, adwords, pay per click, contextual ads, text link ads, john koetsier [/tags]

AdSense funnies

September 29, 2006

Sometimes context is not enough. Sometimes smart machines are really dumb.

Want proof?

Take a look at the Google AdSense ads on this post. It’s a post about a book by an online acquaintance about project management. And it happens to have the word forest in the title.

Now, Google’s got some of the smartest machines in the world, performing millions of calculations each and every second, figuring out what billions of pages across the web contain, and matching ads to that content.

Clearly, however, some subtleties are beyond Google.

Two cheers for serendipity, however. Now I’ve got to find out why trees are better than stocks (see the screenshot at right, third ad).

Without, of course, clicking on my own ads.

[tags] google, adsense, funny, context, john koetsier [/tags]

Belgian idiocy, Google sacrilege

September 22, 2006

Since Google lost the crazy newspaper lawsuit brought by Belgian papers that didn’t want free links and free traffic being sent their way by Google News, the Belgian courts have decreed that it has to put the text of the ruling on its Belgian site.

It’s a google desecration. As TechDirt says, so much for Google’s clean, barren look.

I wonder what the guy who used to email Google with the number of words on its home page every few weeks would do now. You almost wish Google would just axe its Belgian site in protest.

[tags] google, belgium, newspapers, lawsuit, john koetsier [/tags]

Gmail down …

September 19, 2006

Gmail’s down … isn’t Google supposed to be as reliable as a utility?

I guess it is as reliable as utilities – California utilities. In the summer.

[tags] gmail, google, error, utility, network computing, john koetsier [/tags]

Every web hosting company is the worst

September 13, 2006

I was going to write one of those articles.

You know … the host I used to have … the problems it caused … the downtime this site experienced … the agony of dealing with the optimistically-named customer “service” …

You get the picture. You’ve probably experienced it.

I decided not to. There’s just no upside in it. So I didn’t. But in the course of prepping for the post, I did notice something interesting:

Every hosting company is the worst. To someone.

How can you tell? Well, google hosting company. Check the ads overflowing on the sidebar, bursting onto the page, shoving their pugnacious little faces forward.

Lots of them, huh?

Now google worst hosting company. Or, if you like variety, bad hosting company. A bit of a change, no?

The deal is, when you set up your AdWords campaigns, you tell Google what words you want to bid on. You also tell Google when you don’t want your ads to show.

For example, I want my ads on freaking awesome widget to show up when someone googles for freaking awesome widget. But I don’t want my ads to show up when someone googles for free freaking awesome widget.

After all my widget is freaking awesome, and that degree of freaking awesomeness doesn’t come free. So cheapskates who aren’t likely to pay don’t see my ad. They’ll probably click – and cost me money – but not pay. The buggers.

Looks to me like the hosting companies have pretty unanimously decided that ticked-off bad hosting refugees might be a poor choice to market to … especially if you never know what vagaries of the SEO winds will make your name turn up in the organic search results.

It would suck to be showing your ad for Kwality Hostin’ Inc. just as the number one result on Google for worst hosting company turns up Kwality Hostin’, wouldn’t it?

Because everyone’s the worst – to someone.

[tags] worst, hosting company, web hosting, seo, google, adwords, adsense, john koetsier [/tags]

Google finance doesn’t suck

September 7, 2006

I am not a finance wonk and never want to be.

Quarterly reports are excellent insomnia cures, budgets are boring, financial spreadsheets make my eyes spin. It’s just not my thing; my brain doesn’t work that way, and I have no interest in it.

But even finance dorks occasionally need stock quotes, and today I almost accidentally ran into Google Finance (beta, of course). I checked out my company, School Specialty, and really like the interface.

I never know the stock symbols, so being able to just type in the live search box and have matching companies appear is great. And the information when you get to a company home page perfect for my purposes: general overview of the company, and plenty more to dig deeper if you need to.

[tags] google, google finance, john koetsier [/tags]